Modern industrial facilities can comprise a large number of machines operating independently or in conjunction to manufacture a product or manage a process. These can include such high-powered machines as welders, multi-ton stamping presses, pumps, machining robots, load bearing conveyors, mixers, and the like. Given the power of their operations, it can require a large amount of energy to drive these machines. Consequently, the cost of energy consumption is one of the largest expenses faced by an industrial enterprise. For this reason, plant engineers strive to efficiently manage their plants' energy loads to ensure that energy is consumed as efficiently as possible without undermining production goals. An important aspect of any load management strategy, particularly when dealing with electrical energy, is minimization of the peak load seen by the energy supply, since the energy cost to the consumer is typically a function of this peak load. However, maintaining a desired peak load while minimizing impact on production is a difficult task, since there is no simple way to coordinate individual machine demand with overall energy usage.
Moreover, given the disparate nature of the machines used in a given facility, different forms of energy may be required to drive the machines, including electrical, steam, gas, water, air, and other types of energy. Supply and consumption of these different forms of energy must typically be measured and managed separately for each form given the different measurement methods and engineering units used for the various forms. It is therefore difficult to aggregate and view overall load data for a facility when different forms of energy are involved without writing complicated custom code.
Given the importance of load management in industrial environments, there is a need for a load management solution that can be easily integrated with a new or existing general control system and tailored to the specifics of a facility's energy distribution system without the need for complicated custom programming. It would also be advantageous to easily aggregate load data relating to different types of energy in order to provide a comprehensive overall view of the facility's energy usage.